this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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Trying to keep old stuff alive in a digital world is stupid. I do think that kids need to learn to think and research on their own, so AI and grammar and spelling corrections should be disallowed from the laptops and Chromebooks. Having an algorithm fix everything for you and write your papers is developmentally bad.
-old person
I disagree.
I tutored a college student who had dysgraphia. They originally had a calculator accommodation, but this was removed at the request of the instructor.
The student was in no way incapable of learning the material in the class - a remedial math course mostly on basic statistics and presenting data. But they were incapable of remembering most of the multiplication table.
There’s no reason to force a person to do long division by hand. The student was perfectly capable of understanding the process of calculating an average, but actually doing the problem meant that they were counting out by threes on their hand to do 3x7.
I’ve worked with dyslexic students on writing assignments - they are just as capable of intelligently responding to a writing prompt if you ask them verbally. Why should they be punished because they can’t spell (especially when we had like a decade of NOT TEACHING PHONICS)?
I draw a hard line at generative AI, but as long as the thoughts are theirs, I’ve never been concerned too much with students using tools to help them.
Your special needs student using a calculator has pretty much no bearing on this conversation.
Even for students without disabilities, a calculator removes the cognitive demand of the arithmetic. If I am teaching algebra, I want most of their cognition to be taken up by the algebra, not the arithmetic.